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> it's in the shop for MONTHS waiting on parts tbh, if I got a, say, BMW, knowing the nearest branch is 5 hours away, I would factor the possibility that it c

> it's in the shop for MONTHS waiting on parts tbh, if I got a, say, BMW, knowing the nearest branch is 5 hours away, I would factor the possibility that it can be in the show for WEEKS, if not MONTHS, waiting on parts. (my 3-series has spent 2 weeks at the dealership at least twice)

toomuchtodo 8y ago
I have a 2018 Model S and I assume it could take well over a year to get repaired in the event of damage :( it’s not for everyone.
- compscistd 8y ago
  I’m waiting on a fender, a door, and a bottom trim, and I’m at about a month total in middle-of-nowhere Midwest. Luckily, I can drive the (heavily dented) car until parts come in, but if the car can’t be driven then you’re stuck with the rental your insurance provides.
  - excalibur 8y ago
    Driving the insurance's rental is perfectly acceptable. When you're really screwed is if the thing breaks down on you, and you have to pay the rental fees out of pocket, along with the repairs.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      > When you're really screwed is if the thing breaks down on you, and you have to pay the rental fees out of pocket, Rental coverage is quickly exhausted waiting for Tesla to provide replacement parts.
    - martin_a 8y ago
      Don't know about the US or whereever you live, but in Germany rental cars are only provided by the insurance for about two to four weeks. After that you'll have to pay them by yourself.
      - elbrian 8y ago
        Can confirm, this is how it works in the US too, even with a top-notch provider (Commerce) with comprehensive coverage.
ehnto 8y ago
How often do you expect it to happen? Realistically you should factor in not having a car for any car purchase simply because your car could get totalled at any trip. But I find it surprising that parts and service could take so long. Being a BMW service center surely replacing parts is core to their job. I can get parts faster on my own.
- rmason 8y ago
  > How often do you expect it to happen? I'm not disparaging Tesla quality but have you ever heard of Murphy's Law? What can go wrong will go wrong. Right now I am without a working heater, waiting for two weeks on a blenderator motor for a Ford Explorer. Stuff happens...
  - ehnto 8y ago
    It just seemed like the original commenter had planned ahead for many multi-month part shipments. Pragmatic perhaps but I would have to question my vendor! I drive late model grey imports so my parts wait is just the time it takes to pull it off a wreck and ship it. I suspect the wait comes from the dealer/manufacturer relationship.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    My guess is that if some distribution region is without new produce to sell because some other part of the company has fucked up the logistics, QUESTIONS ARE ASKED IN UPPER CASE VERY QUICKLY, whereas if it runs out of some sort of spare parts, questions get asked in lower case.
- ken 8y ago
  If my car gets totaled, my insurance will pay for a rental. If my car is at the dealer for 2 weeks, the dealer will give me a loaner. Does Tesla have loaners?
  - Reason077 8y ago
    Yes, they do.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
This puts me off buying a new car. I’d like to see vehicle manufacturers, for the purpose of regular retail owners, extend the warranty of a vehicle if it spends more time in the workshop than the allotted time set out in the repair manual. If remove and replace engine is, for example, 10hrs, then the car should be in the shop for no more than, say, two to three days. If it sits there for days > weeks > months waiting for parts the new car warranty should be extended by the same amount of time. My guess is that’d go a long way to fixing the spare parts waiting times. What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares? It can’t be freight delays; it can’t be that the part isn’t available.
- lutorm 8y ago
  What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares? The manufacturer makes money putting those parts in new cars, it makes no money sending it out to repair yours...
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Yep, that was going to be my first guess. If they can delay delivering your part till next financial year, or the end of the production run for that model, the books look that much better.
    - ianai 8y ago
      And that should be criminal.
      - muzika 8y ago
        No
- Reason077 8y ago
  ”What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares?” I get the impression that Tesla doesn’t like to keep a lot of parts in inventory. When a spare is ordered, it’s ordered from the manufacturer of that part. Elon actually discussed this on the most recent conference call. He said that they’re trying to improve things by having parts shipped directly to service centres and body shops rather than via a Tesla distribution/logistics centre.
benj111 8y ago
Do you think that's reasonable? What do you do to your cars? I've never had a car in overnight. And I couldn't point to anyone I know being without their car for even a week. And I don't drive premium cars either, naively I would expect premium cars to be more reliable, and have better service.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  Premium cars tend to be less reliable, but it really depends on the car. Certain models are reliable, certain brands are more reliable, and if we're speaking in broad strokes certain countries make more dependable vehicles. If you want something that will just work, buy Japanese. I had an old Toyota that I just drove and drove and would not die. Multiple cross country trips and I never ever serviced it, except changing the oil every ~50k miles. The thing just kept on going. I just bought a brand new BMW and I had to take it back to the dealer to fix something that broke after 5k miles.
  - benj111 8y ago
    My car history includes Fords, Mazdas and Skodas (VW group), so nothing Japanese. (Edit: Apart from the Mazda.... Obviously.....) I don't know if the parent was talking about major crashes, or reliability issues, 2 weeks in the shop would be my limit of acceptability for any car, a month, I'd be asking for my money back assuming it were a reliability issue. And multiple 2 week waits or a month wait, I wouldn't be buying from that manufacturer or dealer again, whatever the reason. Is that my European point of view? have I been amazingly lucky?
    - ninjaoxygen 8y ago
      Not counting the Mazda as Japanese then? Maybe you had one from the Ford-era?
      - benj111 8y ago
        Doh ?! I kind of mentally pigeonhole it with Kia, Hyundai and Daewoo, as they all arrived/got popular at a similar time. In the UK at least. Plus, subjectively, it just doesn't sound like a Japanese name (to me).
mschaef 8y ago
> (my 3-series has spent 2 weeks at the dealership at least twice) I guess some things don't change. I had a Z3 around 2000-01 and I distinctly remember driving down Austin's Mopac in my year old car with something like five warning lights' worth of problems glaring at me. Then at some point the dealership broke the clock during a service visit, and then there was the winter where the engine thermostat stuck wide open, so the car never warmed up and the heater didn't work. Dealer service was terrible too. On one of my many trips in to the service department, I pulled in to a co-worker who had just relocated to the area with his 540i. They wouldn't provide a loaner car because he hadn't bought at the dealership. (Because he didn't live in the same state when he bought his car.) My last service visit, I took the car in with a spare tire on and had to get the normal tire fixed elsewhere in the meantime. Of course, when I went to pick the car up, they refused to put the normal tire back on until I drove the car out front of the sales department and started jacking the car up to replace it myself.
- jcadam 8y ago
  > until I drove the car out front of the sales department and started jacking the car up to replace it myself. Nice.
FireBeyond 8y ago
3 weeks is not months. And is likely the exception. My Jaguar had some issues, the dealership would overnight parts from around the US, and "if we need to go to the UK for them it'll be a couple of days".

toomuchtodo 8y ago

I have a 2018 Model S and I assume it could take well over a year to get repaired in the event of damage :( it’s not for everyone.

compscistd 8y ago
I’m waiting on a fender, a door, and a bottom trim, and I’m at about a month total in middle-of-nowhere Midwest. Luckily, I can drive the (heavily dented) car until parts come in, but if the car can’t be driven then you’re stuck with the rental your insurance provides.
- excalibur 8y ago
  Driving the insurance's rental is perfectly acceptable. When you're really screwed is if the thing breaks down on you, and you have to pay the rental fees out of pocket, along with the repairs.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > When you're really screwed is if the thing breaks down on you, and you have to pay the rental fees out of pocket, Rental coverage is quickly exhausted waiting for Tesla to provide replacement parts.
  - martin_a 8y ago
    Don't know about the US or whereever you live, but in Germany rental cars are only provided by the insurance for about two to four weeks. After that you'll have to pay them by yourself.
    - elbrian 8y ago
      Can confirm, this is how it works in the US too, even with a top-notch provider (Commerce) with comprehensive coverage.

ehnto 8y ago

How often do you expect it to happen? Realistically you should factor in not having a car for any car purchase simply because your car could get totalled at any trip. But I find it surprising that parts and service could take so long. Being a BMW service center surely replacing parts is core to their job. I can get parts faster on my own.

rmason 8y ago
> How often do you expect it to happen? I'm not disparaging Tesla quality but have you ever heard of Murphy's Law? What can go wrong will go wrong. Right now I am without a working heater, waiting for two weeks on a blenderator motor for a Ford Explorer. Stuff happens...
- ehnto 8y ago
  It just seemed like the original commenter had planned ahead for many multi-month part shipments. Pragmatic perhaps but I would have to question my vendor! I drive late model grey imports so my parts wait is just the time it takes to pull it off a wreck and ship it. I suspect the wait comes from the dealer/manufacturer relationship.
- Arnt 8y ago
  My guess is that if some distribution region is without new produce to sell because some other part of the company has fucked up the logistics, QUESTIONS ARE ASKED IN UPPER CASE VERY QUICKLY, whereas if it runs out of some sort of spare parts, questions get asked in lower case.
ken 8y ago
If my car gets totaled, my insurance will pay for a rental. If my car is at the dealer for 2 weeks, the dealer will give me a loaner. Does Tesla have loaners?
- Reason077 8y ago
  Yes, they do.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

This puts me off buying a new car. I’d like to see vehicle manufacturers, for the purpose of regular retail owners, extend the warranty of a vehicle if it spends more time in the workshop than the allotted time set out in the repair manual. If remove and replace engine is, for example, 10hrs, then the car should be in the shop for no more than, say, two to three days. If it sits there for days > weeks > months waiting for parts the new car warranty should be extended by the same amount of time. My guess is that’d go a long way to fixing the spare parts waiting times. What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares? It can’t be freight delays; it can’t be that the part isn’t available.

lutorm 8y ago
What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares? The manufacturer makes money putting those parts in new cars, it makes no money sending it out to repair yours...
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Yep, that was going to be my first guess. If they can delay delivering your part till next financial year, or the end of the production run for that model, the books look that much better.
  - ianai 8y ago
    And that should be criminal.
    - muzika 8y ago
      No
Reason077 8y ago
”What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares?” I get the impression that Tesla doesn’t like to keep a lot of parts in inventory. When a spare is ordered, it’s ordered from the manufacturer of that part. Elon actually discussed this on the most recent conference call. He said that they’re trying to improve things by having parts shipped directly to service centres and body shops rather than via a Tesla distribution/logistics centre.

benj111 8y ago

Do you think that's reasonable? What do you do to your cars? I've never had a car in overnight. And I couldn't point to anyone I know being without their car for even a week. And I don't drive premium cars either, naively I would expect premium cars to be more reliable, and have better service.

Judgmentality 8y ago
Premium cars tend to be less reliable, but it really depends on the car. Certain models are reliable, certain brands are more reliable, and if we're speaking in broad strokes certain countries make more dependable vehicles. If you want something that will just work, buy Japanese. I had an old Toyota that I just drove and drove and would not die. Multiple cross country trips and I never ever serviced it, except changing the oil every ~50k miles. The thing just kept on going. I just bought a brand new BMW and I had to take it back to the dealer to fix something that broke after 5k miles.
- benj111 8y ago
  My car history includes Fords, Mazdas and Skodas (VW group), so nothing Japanese. (Edit: Apart from the Mazda.... Obviously.....) I don't know if the parent was talking about major crashes, or reliability issues, 2 weeks in the shop would be my limit of acceptability for any car, a month, I'd be asking for my money back assuming it were a reliability issue. And multiple 2 week waits or a month wait, I wouldn't be buying from that manufacturer or dealer again, whatever the reason. Is that my European point of view? have I been amazingly lucky?
  - ninjaoxygen 8y ago
    Not counting the Mazda as Japanese then? Maybe you had one from the Ford-era?
    - benj111 8y ago
      Doh ?! I kind of mentally pigeonhole it with Kia, Hyundai and Daewoo, as they all arrived/got popular at a similar time. In the UK at least. Plus, subjectively, it just doesn't sound like a Japanese name (to me).

mschaef 8y ago

> (my 3-series has spent 2 weeks at the dealership at least twice) I guess some things don't change. I had a Z3 around 2000-01 and I distinctly remember driving down Austin's Mopac in my year old car with something like five warning lights' worth of problems glaring at me. Then at some point the dealership broke the clock during a service visit, and then there was the winter where the engine thermostat stuck wide open, so the car never warmed up and the heater didn't work. Dealer service was terrible too. On one of my many trips in to the service department, I pulled in to a co-worker who had just relocated to the area with his 540i. They wouldn't provide a loaner car because he hadn't bought at the dealership. (Because he didn't live in the same state when he bought his car.) My last service visit, I took the car in with a spare tire on and had to get the normal tire fixed elsewhere in the meantime. Of course, when I went to pick the car up, they refused to put the normal tire back on until I drove the car out front of the sales department and started jacking the car up to replace it myself.

jcadam 8y ago
> until I drove the car out front of the sales department and started jacking the car up to replace it myself. Nice.

FireBeyond 8y ago

3 weeks is not months. And is likely the exception. My Jaguar had some issues, the dealership would overnight parts from around the US, and "if we need to go to the UK for them it'll be a couple of days".